Exploring how best to use telehealth to manage COPD – can you help?

Anyone working in telehealth knows that, of the principal long term conditions to which it is applied, COPD is the most problematic, with many telehealth trials showing no significant benefit. However in various meetings, Dr Julia Bott has tantalised me by suggesting that she and Dr Hilary Pinnock may know how to use telehealth more effectively.

Therefore, on 3rd March, we are holding a small, free, meeting at the Royal Society of Medicine in London from 3pm-5pm to examine how telehealth can be used to manage people with COPD better. Present will be both Dr Hilary Pinnock (University of Edinburgh) and Dr Julia Bott (University of Surrey).

So far we have senior representatives from two major telehealth organisations attending and probably need at least three more. If you are interested, please do email this editor, charles.lowe@btinternet.com, explaining why you’d like to join us for what I suspect may prove to be a groundbreaking event.

Our definitions

Telehealth and Telecare Aware posts pointers to a broad range of news items. Authors of those items often use terms 'telecare' and telehealth' in inventive and idiosyncratic ways. Telecare Aware's editors can generally live with that variation. However, when we use these terms we usually mean:

• Telecare: from simple personal alarms (AKA pendant/panic/medical/social alarms, PERS, and so on) through to smart homes that focus on alerts for risk including, for example: falls; smoke; changes in daily activity patterns and 'wandering'. Telecare may also be used to confirm that someone is safe and to prompt them to take medication. The alert generates an appropriate response to the situation allowing someone to live more independently and confidently in their own home for longer.

• Telehealth: as in remote vital signs monitoring. Vital signs of patients with long term conditions are measured daily by devices at home and the data sent to a monitoring centre for response by a nurse or doctor if they fall outside predetermined norms. Telehealth has been shown to replace routine trips for check-ups; to speed interventions when health deteriorates, and to reduce stress by educating patients about their condition.

Telecare Aware's editors concentrate on what we perceive to be significant events and technological and other developments in telecare and telehealth. We make no apology for being independent and opinionated or for trying to be interesting rather than comprehensive.